Senator Manny Pacquiao has made no secret about his delight in having hosted at his mansion in Forbes Park the meeting among administration senators which led to the ouster of senators identified with the Liberal Party from their privileged posts in certain committees. Actually, nobody really cares if these LP senators lost their privileges.
In case Pacquiao doesn’t realize it yet, his having hosted that meeting was inconsequential. The ouster of the LP senators would have taken place regardless of where the meeting was held.
Truth to tell, the ouster was inevitable, considering that the LP’s titular head, the purported Vice President Leni Robredo, has been very critical, even to the point of manifest political opportunism, of the leadership of President Rodrigo Duterte.
For almost a year now, the LP has been enjoying the best of both worlds—the bi-polar status of a political opposition party that criticizes the Duterte administration, and that of a strategic ally in the Senate. It’s about time the LP’s duplicity was halted.
So what if a senator is ousted as chairman of a committee?
Stripping a senator of his chairmanship of a committee is not just a diminution power. It also means less allowances for the ousted senator.
Unknown to many, senators receive large allowances for mere membership in a committee, and a far larger allowance for being its chairman. These allowances are in addition to the salaries and perks they already receive and enjoy, including virtually unlimited expense accounts—all paid for by the already overburdened taxpayers. Yes, it’s not just a matter of power; it’s also a matter of money —lots of it.
This anomalous financial arrangement likewise applies to the House of Representatives. Like their counterparts in the Senate, congressmen enjoy a compensation package consisting of their salaries, large allowances, and charge accounts.
A legislator’s biggest haul is in the discretionary fund given to each of them. Precisely because it is discretionary, the legislator is not required by law to account for it. The legislator can actually pocket it, and the state auditors cannot get in their way.
When a legislator spends his salary, he may do so in whatever way he wishes to because that salary is compensation for work done. On the other hand, when a legislator spends an allowance, it is on the assumption that the expenditure is justified by some official function or public need. Being so, the expenditure must be accounted for.
In this light, therefore, there is no reason why a legislator should be exempted from accounting for his expenditure of public money. Since ordinary government employees are required to account for public money spent in pursuit of their work, there is no reason why the politicians in Congress should be exempted from the same requirement. Undoubtedly, the existence of this discretionary fund is in itself highly anomalous.
Which amount should be larger —a salary or an allowance?
In the case of rank-and-file jobs in the government service, and in jobs in the private sector, salaries are higher than the allowances. That is to be expected because a salary is supposed to be the principal compensation, and allowances are given for the purpose of augmenting the employee’s salary.
Senators and congressmen, on the other hand, have it the other way around. The allowances they get are far larger than their salaries. Since this arrangement is manifestly an anomaly, why the Commission on Audit allows it to take place at all is a big mystery.
Then there are the perks of office, also at the expense of the taxpayers.
Senators and congressmen are very fond of dining at hotel restaurants and other expensive establishments, ostensibly to discuss important matters affecting the state over champagne and imported bar chow, not to mention very expensive meals. These politicians are not worried about the expenses because their gigantic bills are charged to the taxpayers.
They can easily transact business in the catered venues of either the Senate or the Batasang Pambansa, but they don’t. The plush Senate lounge, which is for the exclusive use of the senators and their selected assistants, can readily compete with the restaurants of many five-star hotels in Makati. Its counterpart in the Batasang Pambansa can easily beat the lavish buffets in high-end restaurants in the metropolis.
In contrast to such ostentatious abundance in both houses of Congress, many Filipino children barely have anything to eat in the squalor of their surroundings in depressed areas of Metropolitan Manila. Good grief!
Why should the taxpayers pay for the meals of these politicians, when there are poor Filipinos starving in Pasay City (where the Senate is based) and in Quezon City (where the House of Representatives is located)? If they were the ones to pay for those meals at those expensive restaurants, will these politicians still frequent those places? It’s easy for them to spend money which isn’t theirs.
There is also the matter of transportation.
Vehicles used by senators and congressmen bear low-numbered license plates—No. 7 for senators and No. 8 for congressmen. No traffic enforcer on Edsa will dare accost these vehicles on the days they are banned from the roads.
It is an open secret that the other vehicles of these politicians are issued multiple license plates by the Land Transportation Office, so that these vehicles can circumvent the number-code ban on the roads of Metropolitan Manila.
While senators and congressmen are exempted from complying with the law, the ordinary Filipino motorist must refrain from using his vehicle once a week, and face threats to his life, limb, and health by using the deplorable public transportation system in the national capital region. To add insult to obvious injury, senators and congressmen shamelessly claim that the taxpayer—a term broad enough to include a motorist in the metropolis—is their master, and they are his servants. What hogwash!